Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: a Preview of how Apple is improving file renaming - Page 2

Yes "Save As" was simple, easy, and natural. Lion made that process much less intuitive, and complicated. Restoring an easy way to rename a file will make the purchase of Mountain Lion a no brainer.

From everything I've seen, WinMo sucks big time. Anybody who would even consider it is a schmuck.

Surprised no one has yet mentioned the best open and save dialogs in Macs: use Default Folder by St. Clair Software. I've loved it since at least System 9, maybe earlier. You can rename and delete files in open and save dialogs. More useful its ability to quickly go to recently used folder, favorites, and folders open in Finder. Better than standard Mac dialogs and better than Windows (and I use both a lot). Unfortunately nothing as good for Windows the last time I checked.

Not liking the gray buttons everywhere, though. What happened to nice and visible aqua "default" button that activates when pressing Return or Enter?

Sshhhhhhh. That doesn't make the point he was trying to make.

Very disappointed to see that the Finder sidebar is still full of dull gray icons.

The lack of color in the OS needs to be addressed ASAP.

I agree and it's the little things like a maximise button that actually works. Explorer is much better too than finder. I hate the notification centre with a passion though but I like the taskbar at the top in OSX to quickly see things.

My typical day is RDP sessions from my Snow Leopard machine into MS 2003 or 2008 boxes. MS's OSX version of RDP is crap too.

There are very few features of Windows that I like over my beloved Mac, but the ability to manipulate the file system from within a save dialog is one I've always liked, and used frequently.
I've added this ability to my Mac with Default Folder, but nice to see the feature added to the Finder.
Personally, I hope they include delete as well. With a safety-catch dialog box to prevent inadvertent deletes, I see more good than harm.

The only other feature I can think of that I use in WinEx (and not part of Finder) is copy/paste of directory path. I think it is doable in MacOSX, just clumsy. I end up opening another window and navigating.

Now, how about tabbed Finder windows, with the ability to link two of the tabs to form a dual pane for file movement?
I use TotalFinder, Forklift, or Pathfinder for this. The problems with Forklift and Pathfinder is the lack of integration. TotalFinder would be perfect, but it drops the ability to option-click the close window button. I tend to open a lot of windows, and that feature is missed. TF also crashes at times, although it doesn't take my machine with it.

Am I the only one to have not yet used the new Lion (let alone ML) functions?

Never use versions, since they are not supported in the apps I use - and I do not find clicking or even just looking at the title bar of a window for any file function very intuitive.

Btw, I loathe open/save dialog boxes on Windows and Mac. I mostly open files by drag & dropping them into the window of the already open program. Often I save to the desktop and distribute files to their server volumes afterwards.

I was taught this trick (on Windows 95) by an old time Mac user. :-)

My man!

I am getting so excited with the added functionality ml is getting and by the fact that by 10.8 os x 10.7.5 or so might also be relatively bug free




Guys relax, os x 10.7 onwards is all about content, who cares about visibility? Isn't it nice how grey sidebars and buttons are not interfering with our content, our files? Our files just take center stage, we might not be able to tell where the hell to click to get to them but this quite distracting green of the downloads folder on our sidebar isn't attracting attention to itself anymore!

Um, the problem there would be that you let the kid use your business account. I'm sure your IT department will have a thing or two to tell you about that, too.

.tsooJ

Now if they'd just let us expand the Save dialogue window to add metadata and keywords to a file. Having to go through the Finder and Cmd-I is a pain.

This just in:

Mac OS X 10.9 will be called 'Cowardly Lion':
www.scoopertino.com

Ugh, please no.

It looks much better this way, IMO.

It's funny but you are literally the first person I ve read who says the finder id better this way,, most apologists for lion don't mention it, or ignore the argument, or say something about new design paradigms, or all about content or something similar, but to come upfront and claim it's actually better... I ve not heard anyone before. Comes to show how rubbish the monochromatic sidebar is, and at the very least it needs a settings switch for on or off.

This. There is no good reason not to give the user the choice of colour or grey; all it would take is a radio button in Finder preferences.

Personally I don't like W7. Things were just fine on XP, I still don't understand why companies upgrade to W7. But it's being forced upon the employees, so no choice there. At home, happily use OSX. W7 may be good for some, or a whole lot, just not to me. The movement of the pinned shortcuts in the toolbar or whatever it's called (QuickLaunch in IE4.1SP2) drives me nuts. The icon gets expanded if the program is running, but becomes small when quitting. Right-click on that icon first gives a 3-options shortcut menu, only to become a larger shortcut menu when it has added a list of recent files for that program. Not a problem, but the initial location of the first 3-option shortcut gets bumped up a little, and the 'Exit' option gets moved. This is extremely annoying when you want to close a whole shitload of programs. That amongst other things make W7 a hassle for me to use.


That behavior is beyond comprehension to me as well. And the fact that you can rename files in the CLI with characters that are not allowed in Explorer.exe


Already answered by someone, but rename just by hitting enter. That shortcut is the shortest cut to rename a file. That's probably why it isn't even available in the contextual popup after a right-click, or a 'File/Rename... from the pulldown menu.


That wouldn't make any sense as the discussion is about OSX, not software from a different company.


I too want the colors back. That, and the fact that network shares in the sidebar used to auto-mount when dropping a file on the icon has stopped working, I believe with 10.6


And one in the iTunes prefs please!



It would even make the look more consistent with 3 pulldown menus and 3 checkboxes.

Oh, I'm sorry; I didn't know of such a requirement. Here goes: I'm lovin' it. Get the OS out of my face, please: the more toned down, the better.

.tsooJ

in SL and Lion you can do this already: click the file once, wait a second and click again, et voila you can edit the name right there....

And an entirely different set of UI Images, doubling the size.

This is not a serious comment, right? Where will I find the space for a few kb of images on my 500 GB HDD?

Wouldn't it be nice with a Reveal In Finder feature in the open/save dialogs?

OS' should be getting slimmer, not fatter. Every little helps.

Which universe have you lived in for the last 30 years?

Out of hundreds of OS releases from all vendors, how many times has a version been slimmer than the previous version?

I did say 'should'

Agreed, and the more I read about ML the more anxious I am to have it get here, now that it appears that many of the iOSification elements & crap apps can be turned-off. Just having the damn scroll bars beefed up to make them more responsive is worth $30 right there! Moose, Rocco, help the Judge find his checkbook!!! I'm getting tired of having to Option-drag a scroll bar in Lion's Mail, in order to get some finer granularity in the scrolling.

Regarding Save & Save As, IMHO these were both non-existent problems which got "fixed" by Auto Slave and Versions, regardless of whether they wanted or needed the fix or not. We get a decade of hearing about how remarkably stable OS X is, and then, we get Auto Slave & Versions so we don't lose our data when our remarkably stable OS crashes. Right. I call BS. It's all about iCloud and driving revenue. The more data Apple can drive to their cloud services, the deeper they can reach into our pockets.

Too bad Apple won't use the 3 levels of Users built into OS X. Managed with Parental Controls would be the option for children, auto saving all their precious little documents; Standard would be Apple's goal of turning your $2500 Mac into a $49 cell phone; and Administrator would be Snow Leopard with more manly scroll bars.